Page 122 of Have a Bear-y Little Christmas
Good God. I finally understood why it was so common for people to say they’d seen stars after they came. I thought it was just a common metaphor that the writers I edited used, but boy was it real.
The only real thing that kept me clinging to reality was that I wanted to feel when Remy came. I loved looking at him, loved feeling it, loved hearing it. It was the most simplistic yet tacit proof that I made him feel as good as he made me.
“Fuck, Jeannie, God!”
Just three words, but they were the perfect declaration as he spilled into me. Heat and pleasure, primal and eternal. I wouldn’t ever get tired of it.
Eventually, we ended up entangled in a boneless mess on the mattress, our breathing slowly settling. I was happier than I ever thought I could be, and we still had the rest of our lives together.
Boyfriend and girlfriend. Jeannie and Remy. Whatever titles we might grow into. Although I looked forward to them all, I was happy to stay in this moment for as long as I could.
“All clear.”
I tried to keep my tone level as Dr. Byrne finished reading off the test results from Max’s latest round. “All clear?”
The doctor hit me with a look that was simultaneously incredibly frank, but also seemed to understand the exact depth of everything I was feeling.
“All clear. Max, sir, you are now over a year in remission, and more than six months past your last scare. We will continue to monitor things, but instead of check-ins every other month,we can move to quarterly. Should you continue to show positive trends, we’ll be down to bi-annually.”
“Did you hear that, Mama? Everything’s all clear!”
Of course I heard that. How could I not? But unfettered joy was rolling through me, occupying so much of my brain that my speech centers failed for a moment.
I couldn’t believe it. I was happy to believe it, and it was everything that I had hoped for and more, but it was hard to wrap my mind around the fact that it was actually happening. After so much pain, after so many sleepless nights, my boy was on the path to being completely cancer-free. I had longed for it, and while we technically had about four more years to go before he was officially declared out of the woods, this was a huge step.
“I heard!” I managed to say. I had no doubt that both the doctor and Max could hear the emotion clogging my voice, but I didn’t care. I had earned a good cry. I was just glad that they would be tears of happiness instead of pain. I’d had my fill of those. “We should go celebrate.”
“Let’s go get ice cream! It’s late enough that we can drive by Addy and Eva’s school and grab them too, right?”
“Let me text their dad. The line is long enough that he might already be on the way, so we can just have them meet us at your favorite ice cream parlor.”
“Ourfavorite ice cream parlor,” Max corrected. “Addy and Eva both said that it’s the best in the entire city.”
“And goodness knows an eleven-year-old and eight-year-old are experts on all of the dairy establishments around here.”
“Mama, Eva turned nine last month, remember?”
Oh shoot, she had! It wasn’t like we hadn’t thrown a party. It had been a fun event at some sort of animatronic restaurant. There were only a handful of kids, two from her school, Valencia, Max, and her sister, but Eva had deemed it perfect. She’d taken nearly everyone by the hand to tell them the long, surprisinglycomplicated lore of each animatronic figure, and then all the kids had ended up standing in front of the main stage and mirroring the jerky little dances that came with showtime. It was endearingly creepy, so I was surprised that it had slipped my mind.
But maybe that was because Max’s birthday was coming up, and I was insanely excited. Last year, we’d celebrated, but he had been too weak to do much and too immunocompromised to go anywhere, so we had a movie marathon and stuffed ourselves with pizza and cake. This year, Remy and I were planning a real shindig for him. And while I didn’t think it was healthy to always try to top past memories, I was pretty sure it would be even better than Christmas in July.
“You’re right, I did forget. Thank you for reminding me.”
“Don’t worry. Eva never lets me forget because we’re the same age right now. It doesn’t matter when I tell her that I tested into Addy’s grade, she keeps saying we’re both the youngest now.”
“Does she?” I asked, completely unsurprised as we got our final instructions from the doctor and then headed out. It was no secret to anyone that our terrific trio was about as close to siblings as kids could get without actually being blood related. I had worried that eventually the good times would end and they would all get into a fight, or the girls would not want a gross boy for a friend and my son wouldn’t want icky girls as companions, but that hadn’t happened yet. It was pretty clear to me that somehow, our kids had always been destined to be in each other’s lives.
I really couldn’t be luckier.
Once we made it to the car, I called Remy, and the crackle that came over the line told me he was using the Bluetooth in his car.
“What’s up?” he asked, sounding as happy to hear me as he always did. There was a special sort of healing that came from having someone in my life who was always so pleased to hear my voice.
“Max just got the all clear at the doctor’s, so he wanted to know if we could pick up Addy and Eva and take them out for a little celebration. But I’m guessing you’re already either in line or heading there?”
“Yeah. They really need a new way to do this. The line takes forever and spills out onto the street.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a pain. But since you’re already there, do you want to just meet us at the ice cream parlor as soon as you can?”
